Finding Your Spiritual Capacity

We spend considerable time assessing our physical capacity. How far can we run? How much can we lift? What's our endurance threshold? We test these limits regularly, sometimes formally, often just through daily exertion.

But spiritual capacity operates differently. It's not about pushing harder or achieving more. It's about expanding your ability to hold complexity, to sit with uncertainty, to remain present when everything in you wants to retreat.

Think of it as your inner volume. Some days you have room for difficult conversations, for sitting with someone else's pain, for facing uncomfortable truths about yourself. Other days that capacity shrinks. You're running on fumes, and even small demands feel overwhelming.

The mistake is treating spiritual capacity like physical strength, something you build through repetition and discipline alone. Yes, practice matters. But spiritual capacity grows through honesty about where you actually are right now, not where you wish you were.

You find your spiritual capacity by noticing when you're depleted. When everything becomes transactional. When you're solving problems instead of understanding people. When your first instinct is to explain rather than listen.

And you expand it not by forcing yourself beyond that limit, but by recognizing it exists. By choosing when to engage fully and when to acknowledge you simply don't have the room right now. That discernment itself is spiritual capacity.

The real question isn't how much you can handle. It's whether you're honest about what you actually have to give.